I'm
not too sure how to feel about this one. I liked 'Prometheus', but
watching this made me feel like maybe I didn't after all? I mean..
there was a Xenomorph in this one and the plot mostly made sense, so
it's better, right?
On
the other hand: fuck you, audience. I liked 'Prometheus', I liked 'A
Field in England', I like artsy and I don't think a cohesive plot is
important if the film doesn't need it to be. After the outcry over
'Prometheus' they stepped back a little and played it safer with this
one. That's fine, and 'Prometheus' certainly went overboard in plenty
of places, but to me this film has a little too much 'Rogue One'
about it.
Where
'Prometheus' went full 'Lost' with the number of unanswered wacky
mysteries, 'Covenant' doesn't create too many more, and takes steps
to answering several of the biggest ones. I appreciate this side of
the coin, but the other side is shinier for me - the side that has a
Xenomorph headbutting the cockpit of the ship and then being blown
out of the airlock at the end. It wasn't as overt as it was in 'Rogue
One', but it was present. This kind of fan service is understandable
though, especially when it's part of an over-correct. To be fair, a
lot of the references to the originals were fairly low key, and I'm
probably making a bigger deal out of this than I have to. In my
defence, I have become more sensitive to it thanks to the wave of
2000s and 2100s bad remakes.
The
design was great, and all the sets were very much in keeping with the
style of the original 'Alien'. All of the visual elements are
beautifully put together and the effects were fantastic. There was a
pervasive bleak feeling to the whole film, which works well for the
series (especially when they were first exploring the planet - that
eerie feeling was fantastic, and that was possibly my favourite
portion of the movie).
I
also loved the opening - that's basically my dream home, Wayland has
taste - and any scenes with Michael Fassbender in it, especially when
he's playing David. I didn't like Walter quite so much, possibly just
because he's less conniving and evil, but he was a far closer to
original androids like Ash or Bishop in his mannerisms.
It
lacked the realistic overlapping dialogue and suggestion of a
comfortable lived-in relationship between the characters of the
original. We had a very slow build up, but instead of exploring the
crew (much) we get a lot of details on their mission and the workings
of the ship. Personally I love details like this, but I would have
appreciated some more character connect too, and I think the slow
build up will have bored many viewers (the friend I went to see this
with commented on this in the negative, at any rate). It turned out
that many of the humans were in relationships with one another, but I
never even realised this (and this happened - no joke - at least two
or three times) until one of them died and the other one became
upset about it. The acting was fine though, and the way that the plot
was constructed made the film enjoyable and exciting, especially
towards the second and third acts.
Alien: Covenant: 66.7